March 21, 2019
PRESENT: Peter Doak, Luke Shorty, Maryalice Crofton
Members met at 4pm by teleconference for the work session.
FINANCIAL REPORTS FROM DAFS
Maryalice shared that the accountants in the central finance department were delayed in producing the month end reports for February. This has happened several months in a row. Pete suggested changing the task force meeting to a time when the reports would be available. It was agreed to move the regular meetings of Financial Oversight to the fourth Thursday of each month. The time will remain the same: 4 pm.
REVIEW OF VOLUNTEER GENERATION FUND BUDGET
At the last meeting, the members walked through the Commission Support Grant budget and local share sources. The Volunteer Generation Fund (VGF) was the focus for this month. Over 67% of the funding is subgranted and the match from those subgrants is reported to the federal agency as part of the required local share. After looking at the start/stop dates for this grant, members started to talk about how to convey its status to Commissioners and show it in a one-year operating budget. The conclusion was it should be part of a financial dashboard.
VIRTUAL TOUR OF ONCORPS
The Commission staff use a platform, OnCorps Reports, to manage the National Service grants (AmeriCorps and VGF). Grantees only use the federal platform to submit applications and enroll/exit AmeriCorps members. Everything else is done through OnCorps: monthly expense reports, invoicing for reimbursement, income reports, federal financial reports, all member management tasks (position descriptions, site assignment, time reporting), and performance reporting. Maryalice gave members a virtual tour of the functions with most of the time spent on the financial reports. The monthly expense reports match the format of grant budgets so grantees must match their monthly final ledgers to the lines in the expense report. Once expense reports are approved by MCCS staff, invoices can be submitted for reimbursement of expenses. On a quarterly basis, grantees submit income reports that detail the sources, amounts, and type (cash, in-kind; federal, private, state, foundation) of income that covered the local share expenses reported. They also file a report that is used to create the Federal Financial Report sent to CNCS. There was a good deal of discussion about how to read the reports.
DASHBOARD vs SCORECARD
Based on some background research the members read, it was decided that a scorecard was really the format desired. The goal is to provide Commissioners with a graphic representation of finances that expresses the status of each grant in terms of annual amount, budget, and expenditures. Luke indicated he had a model that he would scan and send to Maryalice. A prototype for a scorecard will be reviewed by the task force in April and shared with the Commission in May to get feedback on the level of detail.
There being no other discussion items, the session ended at 5:06 pm.